Friday, January 10, 2014

August: Osage County

By now, the holiday season is over. If there were any drama
during your holiday family gathering, I am sure it's
absolutely nothing compared to the battle royal in
director John Wells's
adaption of Tracy
Letts's award-winning
play: "August: Osage
County" (USA 2013 | 119 min.). Fantastically
played by an ensemble cast, the film dramatically and
hilariously displays the carnage during a dysfunctional
family's reunion in the deep South. It provides us plenty
guilty pleasure by airing the family's dirty laundry.

The film opens in the Weston family's dark house
in Osage
County, Oklahoma. Still in bed upstairs, Violet
(Meryl
Streep) looks horrible. She has little hair left due
to chemotherapy for mouth cancer which has not stopped
her from chain-smoking. When she opens her mouth but not
for sucking on a cigarette, she pops in a pill or
two. Downstairs, her alcoholic poet husband Beverly
(Sam
Shepard) is hiring a Native American helper Johnna
(Misty
Upham). As soon as Violet comes down and speaks, we
can tell that her cynical spirit roots much deeper than
the agony caused by her cancer and her painkiller
addiction.

Soon after, Beverly disappears (or escapes from
Violet). Their three grown daughters are summoned back to
the house. The resentful eldest Barbara
(Julia
Roberts) comes with her parting husband Bill
(Ewan
McGregor) and their rebellious 14-year-old daughter
Jean (Abigail
Breslin). The soft-hearted middle sister Ivy
(Julianne
Nicholson) lives nearest to Violet, but that's about
as far as closeness goes. However, Ivy is ready to make a
big change and move away with her secret love—the
shy and not-so-bright little Charles (Benedict
Cumberbatch), the only son of Violet's sister Mattie
Fae Aiken (Margo
Martindale) and brother-in-law Charles Aiken
(Chris
Cooper). Then the never-stop-yapping youngest Karen
(Juliette
Lewis) drives in from Florida with her bad-boy fiance
Steve (Dermot
Mulroney).

Although nobody expects this is going to be a happy
reunion, few could have imagined how devastating the
melodrama escalates. The pot begins to boil as soon as
they arrive. By the time they sit at a dining table
together, they begin to be terminated off one by one like
in the Hunger
Games. And without a question, Violet holds the
commanding lead.

Thanks to script-writer Tracy
Letts's brilliant original play,
the characters of the film are memorable and colorful.
It's wise for this screen adaption to remain
faithful to the play, and to retain most exceptionally
written dialog. As a consequence, some of the scenes do
look like a stage production, but that doesn't seem matter
much with so many characters in a topsy-turvy turmoil.

The superb performance from an all-star ensemble cast
makes the film even more entertaining. While the one and
only Meryl
Streep is robustly at her best as
always, Julia
Roberts stunningly gives her best performance in
years. And it's a pure delight to
watch Margo
Martindale and
Chris
Cooper disappear into their characters effortlessly.

In the film, Meryl
Streep spills every Violet's word like throwing out
poisoned flying daggers, without any mercy or empathy. And
many people say hurtful things toward their supposed loved
ones. They struggle with their own anger, regret,
frustration, disappointment, guilt, resentment, and any
other emotion that can still be squeezed in an overwhelmed
mind. Some of them try to contain their emotion, others
simply give up and blast off.

These lively characters look and sound sympathetic, but
strangely, it seems unlikely for us to connect to them
emotionally. As if we are passing a terrible traffic
accident, we take a look at the aftermath to fulfill the
curiosity, and then we can move unmoved and
unattached. But it serves a perfect water cooler topic the
next day. That's the kind of quirky amusement the film
provides, and its spectacle about a dysfunctional American
family is simply hard to resist.